Tag: working-class women

As well as writing about Victorian Occupations, I think its helpful to consider some of those great philanthropists who sought to help those working in the terrible conditions in which so many of the working classes found themselves. During the 19th Century, especially in the latter years, the concerns over sweating and the abuse… Read more »

In this fourth and final post of the history of Rowhedge in the 19th century I’ll be focusing primarily on school life and the strength of the villagers as they fought off all on-comers in their attempts to bring a degree of drainage and sanitation to the village – a situation described as ‘a… Read more »

Rowhedge Rowhedge was, and still is, a small village on the banks of the River Colne in Essex. It is a place where for generations the men worked as fishermen, while the women stayed at home, holding together a family, a home, and in many cases also working. That it became a focus for… Read more »

Crossing Sweeper Continuing with the series on street life in Victorian London, the crossing sweeper was as much a part of this world as the costermongers, flower girls, mush-fakers, pure finders and the numerous other members of the London underclass. Roads and pathways were filthy, covered in mud, rotting vegetable matter and the ever… Read more »

Umbrellas and parasols were a mainstay of a Victorian lady’s wardrobe – in a time when it was unfashionable for a woman to have a sun tan, the parasol was an essential part of a lady’s outfit, and when raining, umbrellas were, as now, considered necessary, however, umbrellas in the modern sense were more a… Read more »

One of the most common questions asked both in state, business and personal interactions is ‘what do you do?’ or ‘what is your job?’ and for the former ‘what is your occupation?’ This may seem like a simple question to answer – but in historical terms it becomes more problematic. The concept of ‘an… Read more »

“Any adventurous jam-maker can be sure, by settling in London, of getting as many female workers as he likes for about 7s. a week – certainly not a subsistence wage in London; and having got them he may treat them pretty much as he likes. He may turn them off for weeks or months in… Read more »

In 1901 over 180,000 women were recorded in the census as working in laundries as washerwomen, ironers and manglers. Every town and village had women working at laundries, small hand laundries existed by the thousands in large towns and the suburbs of London. Alongside these were homebased workers, and also the vast, steam driven laundries… Read more »

‘Napoleon called us “a nation of shopkeepers.” The remark would have been infinitely more degrading if he had called us a nation of hawkers, but certainly quite as true, for there is not one portion or spot of this island but is overrun with them.’[1] Throughout the nineteenth-century, hawkers, street-sellers and costermongers were a common… Read more »

‘Gloving is only a cloak for something worse; to be a gloveress is enough to stamp them with no enviable fame.’[1] In 1852, the anonymous, ‘Humanitas’ wrote to Reynold’s Newspaper in an attempt to bring to the attention of the public the terrible state in which many gloveresses found themselves. To be a gloveress a… Read more »